The term African American artmeansdifferent things to different people.
For some the term designates a largely racial phenomenon, describing all
artistic products -- paintings, sculptures, graphic arts, crafts, architecture,
etc. -- created by North Americans of African descent. For others the preceding
definition fails to take into account the cultural, in addition to the
racial, implications of the term. For this latter group African American art
refers to the artistic and visual products not just of North Americans of
African descent but of many peoples whose work has been shaped thematically,
stylistically, formally, and theoretically by the confluence of black
Atlantic cultures -- folkways and traditions formed as a result of the
transatlantic slave trade and further developed during alternating periods
of colonialism, emancipation, discrimination, and self-assertion. For our
purposes the concept of African American art moves freely between these two
definitions, providing readers with both the breadth of such an idea and the
possibilities for an object-centered and culturally informed definition.

This is part 1, the Introduction to ArtLex on African American artThe other parts are about the periods and styles.

The author of this article, Richard J. Powell PhD, is a professor of art and art history at Duke University who specializes in American, African American and African art. His books include Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991), Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance (1997), and Black Art: A Cultural History (2002).

Ninety years after W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated the need for “the equivalent of a black Encyclopedia Britannica,” Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., realized his vision by publishing Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience in 1999. This new multi-volume edition of the original work expands on the foundation provided by Africana. More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic.

About the Editors:
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University. Professor Gates is well known as an innovator in the field of African American studies and as the author of numerous works.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Lawrence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

The Art Institute of Chicago's collection of African American art provides a rich introduction to African American paintings, sculptures, and prints ranging chronologically from the Civil War era to the Harlem Renaissance and from the civil-rights struggles following World War II to the contemporary period, these works constitute a dynamic visual legacy.